Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp insists he does not need a break from management following a disappointing campaign with the Reds.

Klopp’s team didn’t get into the Champions League because they didn’t finish in the top four for the first time in a full season while he was in charge.

Liverpool went 11 games without losing in the Premier League, but they had to settle for fifth place after a 4-4 draw at Southampton on the last day of the season.

Klopp is the longest-serving manager in the Premier League, and there were rumours that the intense German might leave Liverpool because he was tired of it.

But, asked if he needs time off from football, Klopp said: “No, no, no, not at all. Honestly, I’m completely fine.

“If you’d asked me 11 games ago, ‘do you want to have a break?’, I would have thought about it, to be honest.

“But I’m absolutely fine, full of energy. I have a break – I don’t have training and these kind of things.

“I will find time to reenergise and then we start again in July.”

The fifth-place finish was Liverpool’s worst since the 2015-16 season, when Klopp replaced Brendan Rodgers at Anfield and they finished eighth.

Despite their difficulties, Klopp is encouraged by the manner in which his team remained united during difficult times.

“There is not a lot to learn (from the season) but a lot of clubs when the expectations are as high as ours when things don’t go well pretty quickly you start blaming each other,” he said.

“That didn’t happen here. The better you behave in a crisis, the better you get out of it – and I really thought that was the case for us.

“We’re really, really not happy about it and for a club like us it’s massive not to qualify for the Champions League.

“If we improve, we are all of a sudden again a team nobody wants to play against and that’s what we have to become again.”

Photo by EPA/DANIEL HAMBURY